Project Summary

Dongrong Xu, Ph.D. (Young Investigator 2005) of New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, aims to use imaging to identify the abnormalities in anatomical connectivity of regions believed to be involved in the pathophysiology of adolescent-onset bipolar disorder (BD). Previous studies have suggested that individuals with BD have disturbances in the neural systems that regulate cognition and emotion. These overlapping systems comprise the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and hippocampus within the medial temporal lobe and the striatum. However, there is little direct in vivo evidence demonstrating the anatomical connections between these important areas in healthy subjects, and no studies thus far have directly examined these neural pathways for possible disturbances in connectivity in persons with BD. Dr. Xu proposes to study these neural connections using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in healthy adolescents and to compare these DTI-based measures of connectivity with those in the brains of adolescents with BD. A novel fiber-tracking algorithm will be devised to guarantee the accuracy and the ability to track the sub-cortical regions, where fiber tracking has been deemed to be difficult. Dr. Xu hypothesizes that fiber tracts between the ventral prefrontal cortex and amygdala will differ across diagnostic groups. The methods developed in this project could also be relevant to the study of other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Bipolar\Bipolar I

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